1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the invention relate generally to the field of electrical edge grounding for printed circuit boards and more particularly to an apparatus to guide a printed circuit board or card to a mounted position to engage an edge connector.
2. Background
There exists a need for a printed circuit board card guide that can reduce inconsistencies of the guiding system resulting from use of multiple materials. A need also exists for a printed circuit board card guide that can be manufactured at a lower cost and in a shorter time.
It is well known in the art that printed circuit cards or boards provide for support and interconnection with various electronic components mounted thereon. Conductive strips of material are coated on one side of the printed circuit boards for interconnecting the electronic components.
There exist printed circuit board card guides, such as guides including multiple pieces of copper and electromagnetic interference (EMI) clips. However, existing products are limited in resulting consistency of the guide system and have high manufacturing costs. Unlike the present invention, current products are made out of multiple pieces and dissimilar materials. Multiple piece printed circuit board card guides require a higher cost of manufacturing because each piece has to be installed prior to operation. Furthermore, an additional piece of material increases a chance of failure such as falling off after assembly or during shipping. This causes the problem of leaving no shielding at all. Therefore, there is a need for a solution to remove such problems.
Information relevant to addressing these problems can be found in existing products. However, each existing product suffers from one or more of the following disadvantages: higher manufacturing cost; lack of consistency due to multiple pieces and/or dissimilar materials in a guiding system; insecure connection between pieces; potential intermittent contact by using an many pieces.
The existing products mentioned above are not admitted to be prior art with respect to the present invention by their mention in this Background Section.